Exchange server offline ??

[admin_2]

Our Unity server processes voice messages and stored on the other Exchange server along with e-mail messages.<br>There were error messages as follows:<br>event id 29005 source avwm_mc : access denied to ( name of the Exchange server)<br>event id 1019 :server (name of the exchange server) currently off-line<br>event id 10002 source(avconvmsg_mc) -- group of error messages like this<br>folowed by event id 29002-- server back on-line<br>This could last for about 2 minutes, during this time, user will received "system is unavailable" while trying to retrieve voice messages.<br>From NT event viewer, this happened almost everyday, there were 4 occurences on 6/13. <br>The version of the unity software is 2.64, and NT 4.0 sp6, Exchange 5.5 sp4.<br>fcni@lambtech.com <br><br>

[#2]

We've seen this at a few sites for various reasons. The "traffic cop" model is what you're experiencing when users dial in to check messages and we tell them we can't talk right now. If we think an Exchange server is off line we wont let users try to check their messages if they're homed on that box since it runs the risk of "wedging" the MAPI thread the call is on and it can burn a port in some cases (not to mention the caller will simply hear dead air for 20 minutes or so while MS times out waiting for the thread to quit).

The question is why we think the Exchange servers are going off line. We're querying every server in the site and if they take too long to respond, we log that error you note and mark it as down. If these are coming in rapid succession (i.e. the time between the down message and the up message is very short) it could be that the servers are just sluggish at that time for some reason.

What time of day do these happen? Is it always in the morning when the first calls come into the system by any chance? Does it happen to coincide with the on line defragmentation schedules for the local Exchange server or any/all of the other Exchange servers in the site?


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#3]

I got the same exact errors this morning. And to answer your questions for our situation... yes the online defragmenter started @ 6:00am and yes the following messages in the event viewer were the stop messages @ 7:35am

[#4]

We've had a few such cases that were cleared by running the Exchange optimizer and properly adjusting for the number of objects in the directory. Have you done that recently?

Also, can you check the size (to the byte) of the AVWM.DLL file in the system32 directory?

Are you running 2.4.6?

Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#5]

The version of AVWM.DLL is 1.0.0.1 and the size is 172 KB, dated on 12/13/00.
We have about 850 unity ID defined on Unity/Exchange server, the email home server has over 1200 accounts, not every email user has unity account.
What is the proper number of objects to set when running the Exchange optimzer? What parameter should i look for? The number of information store users is set as default(500) on the Unity box.
Thanks,
fcni

[#6]

OK… first, search the CD #1 of your 2.4.6 CD set and look for AVWM.DLL. You should see one that’s 140K on there. Just drop this one over the 170k one in System32 and restart Unity. The difference between these two is the smaller one is “free threaded” which allows every caller to get their own MAPI thread and the larger one basically makes everyone share a single thread… this makes things slower, obviously, but this was necessary before Exchange 5.5 SP4 since MAPI wasn’t properly thread safe. We seem to have an upgrade issue where this guy isn’t getting overwritten by the 140k version as it should.

As for the Exchange optimizer, always go heavy on the number of users. First, every subscriber is actually TWO mail users… the regular mail user account and then the “primary call handler” account which is created hidden and shows up under the Unity folder at your site container. Every object under that Unity folder is really a mail user we’ve used for our own purposes, so keep that in mind. I always advise folks to round way up, you wont do any harm prepping the system for more users than you really have… it’ll allocate more space and threads which I suppose can get bad if you go too wild but in general bigger is better. If you’re getting “Exchange is running low on threads” errors/warnings in the event log, definitely crank it up. If you’re curious about what optimizer does (it does a lot) here’s a link Keith sent around about it a while back that’s interesting reading:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q246/1/25.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=optimizer time&rnk=4&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=ECH


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#7]

Thanks for your quick response.
The following DLL on our Unity/Exchange server's winnt\sytem32 has older date than Unity CD(2/7/01):
AVLOG32.dll 12/13/00 73 kb
avLogmgrperf.dll 12/13/00 36 kb
avLogMgrPerfApi.dll 12/13/00 24 kb
AVMEM32.dll 12/13/00 24 kb
AVOS32.dll 12/13/00 35 kb
avtsm.dll 12/13/00 32 kb
(AVWM.dll 12/13/00 172 kb )
AVWMFree.dll 12/13/00 132 kb
Sx32w.dll 3/20/00 36 kb
UnityAvWay.dll 12/13/00 176 kb
Should these dll get copied also?
fcni

[#8]

nope... just copy the AVWM.dll off the CD (should be 140k) over the one you have there (170k). don't mess with the other ones.

Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#9]

Does it matter if the rest of the exchange site is not at SP4? Unity=Exch sp4 but, the mailbox servers are at Exch sp3.

schois

[#10]

Technically from our end, no... however if you search around out here you'll find a couple sites that experienced problems in Exchange (MTA stuff among other things) when they mixed and matched SP3 and SP4 across their site. Microsoft strongly reccomends you keep all servers at the same SP level and from the experiences of folks out here I think they suggest it for a reason... I wouldn't tempt fate if I were you.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

[#11]

Looks like new version of AVWM.dll(140KB)and Exchange optimizer to increase number of users worked for us. No offline or access denied messages for the last two days. Thanks for your help.
We do get other warning messages:
1. Event ID 101 source AvCs_mc
desc: Assertion failed:nlndex 2. Event ID 1023 source: MsExchangeIs Private
Type: Failure Audit
service account was validated as unity_servername but was unable to log on to user's mailbox
Should we be concerned about these messages?
Thanks.
fcni

[#12]

cool...

no, you don't need to worry about that message. You'll get that for each mail user that's homed off the Unity server (i.e. that has their home store in an Exchange server that's not on our box). Exchange dumps that in there as a security warning since our local accoung is busily logging into everyone's mailbox to monitor its status. MS couldn't suppress the message for us so you have to look at them in the logs.

annoying but not a problem.


Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)